Donald Trump will try to ride the Brexit bandwagon all the way to the White House

Donald Trump, never one to shy away from adding his ample frame to a bandwagon, has been sporting a particularly Cheshire Cat-like grin in recent days.

Rightly or wrongly Mr Trump and his acolytes have been spurred on by Brexit, claiming they are now part of a trans-Atlantic zeitgeist in which voters, fed up with mass migration and economic stagnation, are rising up.

"The promises that globalism is the solution, the promises that government's going to make your life better if you just give up your freedom, the promises that we know better than you how to make your lives better, have been rejected.

"That's what Donald Trump has identified, that's what Brexit identified, and that's what's going to be the basis for the election in 2016."

Watch | Donald Trump hails Brexit result as he arrives in Scotland

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Naysayers point out that Brexit was a movement involving issues of national sovereignty while Mr Trump is simply an individual candidate, and some would say a repugnant one, running in a domestic election.

But in one respect his supporters are right, and that is the comparison they are making between Brussels and Washington.

Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy and borders. Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future.Donald Trump

Great swathes of America feel the same, and much worse, about their own capital and its pampered, isolated political class.

Polls show the approval rating of the US Congress is now down to just nine per cent. Jean-Claude Juncker was probably more popular in the East Midlands.

Elected representatives, who spend their days achieving little in the US Capitol, are seen by many of their own constituents as corrupt, morally bankrupt leeches who have run the country into the ground. On all sides it is widely accepted that Washington is "broken".

Watch | Kids discuss David Cameron, Donald Trump and how they feel about a Brexit

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This is the reason why Mr Trump holds press conferences on Scottish golf courses, or anywhere other than Washington. It is the reason why he never talks too much about policy, why he refuses to morph into a more traditional style of politician, and why he keeps engineering public bust-ups with senior figures in his own Republican Party.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a possible Trump running mate, claimed the anti-establishment parallels between Brexit and Trumpism were clear:

"Almost the entire establishment in the UK was in the Remain camp. There's something going on in our society, and it's happening in Western societies, where there's tremendous anxiety over economic stagnation, immigration, and faceless bureaucrats not responding to the people.

"The genius of Donald Trump is he has given voice to that."

Democrats - and some Republicans in Congress - have been comforted by polls showing Hillary Clinton, an establishment figure if ever there was one, opening up a big lead over Mr Trump. Jake Sullivan, Mrs Clinton's senior policy adviser, dismissed comparisons between Brexit and Mr Trump. On a conference call to journalists in Washington he said: "This American election is about what's happening here in America, not what's happening in Yorkshire or in Cardiff."

But amid the Brexit aftermath, mark the words of Muriel MacGregor, 52, a hotel clerk and Leave voter in Aberdeen. "I don't know exactly what happens next, I don't think anybody does," she said. "But I really feel like we needed something different, because this isn't working."